Why the creator allows so much suffering?

Q:
Why nature does not help soul in order to bring heaven to this earth, or to end all the difficulties? And why the creator from the very beginning made this universe like this, with all the species of this earth suffering? If we got a chance to contact the creator…

ALOKDA:
Suffering is an undeniable fact of our earthly life. So too evil very much exists. The question is about its cause and cure, if any. Here we have a number of theories, each valid in its own realm but none touches the root of the problem.

According to the Scientists suffering and evil are all due to the nature of things. It means that this is how Nature works, – material and psychological nature, and there is no deeper reason to it. We have to discover the grooves of nature, unravel her processes and find ways to correct them with medication or other methods and processes. The results are rather quick but often temporary and there is no permanent remedy to abolish the possibility of suffering. The human body and mind continue to be vulnerable to the possibility of suffering and propensity to evil. At best one can somewhat contain it by imposing and promoting a rational way of life and social order. Here we have these two factors operating, first is the vulnerability due to our heredity, constitution and the body’s mechanism. Secondly, we have our own role by not living according to the rules of nature and not following a rational, moral way of life. Not that this will eliminate the possibility but perhaps reduce it.

According to Religious thought the law of suffering and the propensity to evil are because man deviates from the Laws given by God or according to the tenets of a given Religion. There is also the law of karma where our own deeds bear results in the future. Allied to Religion is the occult understanding of life wherein man is moved and influenced by cosmic forces that open doors to suffering or compel his heart to err by luring him to evil. By propitiating these forces we can find temporary or permanent relief. But the vulnerability remains and one remains subject to these cosmic forces and the harsh law of karma. Here again the problem goes back to man who alone is responsible for his suffering.

Spiritual philosophy goes one step deeper as it tries to discover the roots of suffering and evil in the human consciousness. According to the traditional spiritual understanding suffering and evil are due to Ignorance and ego that make us chase desires that invariably results in suffering one way or the other. If the desire is not fulfilled it results in frustration. If fulfilled it gives temporary happiness but because of the attachment that follows and the transient nature of everything suffering invariably follows sooner or later. Desire deviates our conduct and in trying to forcibly snatch something there is the emergence of evil. The remedy is to get rid of ignorance and desire, to free ourselves from the ego and dwell in the peace of Nirvana. The solution is permanent though not as easy as it seems to be. Besides while it can eliminate individual psychological suffering and propensity to evil, it cannot eliminate physical suffering (though one can rise above it) and since it cannot change others, life upon earth will always remain vulnerable to suffering and evil though the individual can at least eventually find the permanent exit door to the state in which suffering does not touch anymore. The reason for ignorance is presumably the mysterious Maya whose origin and purpose remains itself unknown.

As you can none of these are satisfactory and do not address the problem comprehensively. Most importantly the origin of the law of suffering and evil propensities remains unexplained. So what does Sri Aurobindo and the Mother say? We can summarise it as follows.

As long as the human body remains what it is, the vulnerability to suffering will remain. Whether child or adult the body driven by seeds of heredity, the heart vulnerable to dark forces, the mind veiled by ego and ignorance and the life driven by desires and open to fear the spell of suffering and evil will always remain. Individual can liberate himself but earthly life will always be subject to this dark law. All these things are accepted by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as operating processes that bring suffering and open the doors to evil. However, he takes up the unanswered questions of the origin of Ignorance and ego and desire itself. Instead of blaming man he takes the burden and the final responsibility back to God.

The origin of ignorance lies in the origin of Creation itself but unlike the traditional explanation of the mysterious Maya suddenly superimposing herself on the Divine or Brahman, Maya is the power of the Divine Himself and her work is to create many divine individuals out of the One Infinite Divine. The creation of Many requires the veiling of the sense of totality and the All. The infinite Consciousness becomes limited leading to ignorance and desire and ego and suffering and evil. This however is done with the purpose of each of these seemingly separate individualities to recover the Whole divinity without losing its individuality. It is like the tree limits itself in a seed thereby losing its features of the tree. But it is only so that the seed growing into the tree multiplies the One original tree into many trees. Ignorance therefore is a temporary necessity, suffering and evil incidents that act only as a spur to hasten the seed’s growth into a tree. But even in this limited state of utter ignorance there is an unseen spur that compels us (as the seed is compelled) to unfold our divine possibility. This divine compulsion uses everything including the worst defeat and failure and fall to jump across Time. It uses suffering and evil and death and all else to hasten the goal of divinising matter and furthering our spiritual evolution. It is this Divine Intent working in creation in and through everything that alone can justify the the long or short interlude of pain.

Now to come back to the analogy of the tiger and the deer, the tiger prowls upon the deer so that the deer grows in swiftness and vigilance. Nature assists by multiplying the deer while the tiger becomes a dwindling species. One may say that what about those deer who are already sacrificed in the belly of the tiger? It is here that the real purpose of the immortal soul comes into play. Forms are destroyed, our outer being and personality suffers but the inner being and the soul grows in power and wisdom and strength through all this. One may say that well we do not know about the soul since we have not seen it. We see only what is happening on the surfaces of life. But can we ever understand life by looking at the surfaces alone? Don’t these events that make us suffer also raise questions about life and push us out of our comfort zones? These are golden moments when detaching ourselves from the flow we step back and try to find the soul, the meaning and purpose of our existence, the true value of our life. If we can do this then we may well feel grateful for the ordeals since they change us for good. Then we also understand the deep utility of suffering that only helps to hasten our progress. But unfortunately, most of us lose the moment and waste the opportunity.

We may ask could there have been a better painless process. Well then there would be no process, no evolution but beings fixed in certain happy moulds from beginning to end like the gods. It would be like artificial ready-made tree replicas that may look even better than the original but there will be no challenge, no difficulty to conquer, no new possibility to realise. Such a world with its limited joy and perfection within boundaries may be liked by the ego and desire self in us but the soul of man will find it insipid and prefer to be driven out of such heaven and build something beautiful out of base material. Our souls have chosen this and not some arbitrary God has pushed us forcibly into it. And the Divine too enters into the play with us, takes our wounds upon Himself, bleeds upon the cross, steers us through the Mahabharata, faces the danger and leads us through it all to the predestined Victory. When we see this way things become clearer.